“Punning on Chinese names is a low form of wit.” ~ Clive James (writer, broadcaster and low wit).

DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI (1937) is one of two Anna May Wong films directed by French emigré Robert Florey in Hollywood. I saw the second collaboration, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, at the Museum of the Moving Image, I think, on a trip to New York, where it was playing as part of a Wong retrospective (AMW is being rediscovered and reappraised a fair bit these days). I remember it being decent enough, with a few imaginative directorial flourishes. While DANGEROUS is a fairly sombre, noir-styled crime drama with Wong playing second banana to Akim Tamiroff, who was being seriously groomed as an exotic leading man (!), DAUGHTER is more in the way of a romp.

Wong is Lang Yin Ling, daughter of an antiques dealer murdered by people-traffickers, (a topical plot, but this sombre start scarcely darkens the proceedings) who vows revenge and sets about tracking down the boss of the outfit, first travelling to the South Seas or somewhere, working as a hooch dancer so she can infiltrate the racket. Meanwhile, cop and obvious romantic interest Philip Ahn has inveigled his way into the outfit by getting a job on the crook’s boat. Complications ensue.

Better known, perhaps, as Master Kan in TV’s Kung Fu.

For a minor-league film, this picture has a pretty great cast. Dependable surly Charles Bickford, youthful Anthony Quinn and Flash Gordon himself, Larry “Buster” Crabbe, play malefactors. Wong’s fellow graduate of the Sternberg glamour academy, Evelyn Brent, is a moll. Louise Brooks once observed that E.B.’s approach to acting was to stride into a scene, plant her feet wide apart, and stand with her hands on her hips, and that Sternberg made her great by softening her with feather boas and keeping her from striking poses. Well, she decidedly backslid after Sternberg.

Two-fisted fellows. Never has a hyphen been more important than in that last sentence.

Favourite supporting player was John Patterson, whom I’d never heard of, who plays a cauliflower-eared Irish ex-boxer working as a chauffeur to Mrs. Big, Cecil Cunningham (Cecil is a woman), who turns out to be a swell guy. Actually, there are lots of NICE PEOPLE in this film, I immediately liked it for that reason. For some reason, they weren’t boring, even if they weren’t brilliantly written. They were just nice.

While no masterpiece, DAUGHTER gets a shot in the arm once we get to Bickford’s sleazy rum joint, the Home Cafe (which is it?). Florey suddenly gets inspired, skewing the camera, laying on the atmos thick and lurid, and thronging the frame with characterful extras.

After this sequence the film lapses into a solid, entertaining third act with plenty of fisticuffs (poor Philip Ahn seems seriously winded by the end), and a coda featuring untranslated Chinese dialogue between our two lovebirds and some quips for Patterson. “By the time you get out of jail my grandchildren will be collecting my social security cheques.”

DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, made six years earlier, is a silly Fu Manchu movie with Wong playing the daughter of the crime lord, here rendered chubby by Warner Oland, better known as Charlie Chan. For some reason Swedish actors were considered ideal to play orientals in Hollywood. The story, a travesty of Sax Rohmer’s racist pulp Daughter of Fu Manchu (itself something of a travesty) gives Wong an incomprehensible character trajectory from conscience-tortured avenger of imagined wrongs, to sadistic villainess. Threatening to disfigure the blonde heroine with acid, unless her boyfriend mercy-kills her first, is the one moment of zesty sadism comparable to Myrna Loy’s lip-smacking turn as Fah Lo See in MASK OF FU MANCHU (she was a popular Fah Lo See). The dialogue is by the esteemed Sidney Buchman (MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON), and he’s clearly trying for SOMETHING, but the results are pretty ungainly and risible. “Death shall first waken Petrie from sleep, and then end his lingering horror with a slow knife.”

Sessue Hayakawa (THE CHEAT, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI) is romantic interest (Wong’s films either shrink in terror from the spectre of miscegenation, or deflect it by attempting to provide suitably ethnic partners), struggling somewhat with his dialogue. He never once confuses an “L” with an “R” sound, but it seems to be absorbing all his concentration to avoid it. He’s rigid with strain at all times: “He’s terrifying!” exclaimed Fiona during his love scene.

Enjoyable supporting thespage comes from the pleasingly named Harold Minjir, as an effete English Comedy Homosexual, who actually saves the day in the end. This seems to have been Minjir’s biggest ever role (he was actually American-born), in a bit-part career that saw him typed as hotel clerks, couturiers and secretaries. Shadowplay salutes his fey heroism!

Wong herself is dependably dignified, which is part of why she’s being honoured these days. As an actress she’s adequate, but her waif-like figure, strong and noble features, and surprisingly deep voice with its unusual enunciation make her a striking presence, and that typical solemnity makes her warm smile more surprising. Maybe her uniqueness as a Chinese-American star in that period, and the dignity with which she always performs, are what make her so sympathetic, in addition to her natural charisma. Even when she plays a villain, I’m on her side.

I love it how old movies come with their own visual Babelfish translator for foreign languages. In DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, Sessue Hayakawa is handed a matchbox with a secret message written on it in Chinese.

After a quick dissolve, we get to read what it says in English.

Such devices are wildly unreal, or surreal, when you think about it. Like when they turn the lights out in a cartoon, and you can still see the characters’ eyes. Where did the idea come from that these things would work and be happily accepted by the audience?

Seems to me the innovators who dreamed up these devices had a lot more confidence that most of us today.